Posts tagged with "Theaster Gates":

The exhibition, titled But To Be A Poor Race, uses painting to explore themes found within W.E.B. Du Bois's seminal book, The Souls of Black Folk. In the book, Du Bois uses essays to chronicle examples of exceptionalism within the African American community in an effort to humanize Black experiences during an era of segregation and racism. Du Bois's work is considered to be important both as a sociological exploration and a political text.

The paintings on display reinterpret statistical data presented in The Souls of Black Folk as abstract, geometric fields of color. The artist also uses sculpture—including a collection of sculptural objects, ephemera, and video artworks—to explore themes of Black experience, visual politics, and shamanism. Three of the works utilize bound copies of Jet magazines, a weekly digest focusing on important figures in the African American community that ran in print form from 1951 until 2014, to convey the lines of a long poem. Each of the works contains a stanza from the poem, with the three works arranged at eye level along the gallery walls so they can be read while walking.

In a press release for the exhibition, Gates describes the exhibition as an exploration of racialized poverty, saying,"But To Be A Poor Race questions a particular kind of poverty, one that is not just about a lack of economic capital but one that is deprived of the basic elements from which one can make a living."

In a work hearkening to contemporary political times, the exhibition also features a video titled My country tis of thee that depicts a musical performance of the song My Country 'Tis of Thee by Gates and musicians The Black Monks of Mississippi. In the video, the artists perform the patriotic song as both a sincere expression of patriotism and simultaneously as a work of satire.
The exhibition is on view until February 25, 2017. For more information, see the Regen Projects website.

Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates appeared in the Architectural League of New York’s Current Work series on November 21, which was co-sponsored by the Parsons School of Constructed Environments, Parsons School of Design and The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union. A star in the art world, Gates crosses many boundaries and disciplines, holding two degrees in urban planning, as well as ones in religion and ceramics. Billie Tsien of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architect introduced him by saying that his life resembled a fairy tale—he’s a reverse Snow White as the only boy of 8 children, mixed with a bit of Princess and the Pea. I would venture there’s also elements of Jack and the Beanstalk, along with shape-shifter qualities.
Gates has been transforming the South Side of Chicago, his home town. But it’s taken him a while to get there. After studying at Iowa State University, then living in South Africa and Japan, he returned to Chicago in 1999. After trying to get his ceramics noticed by the art establishment while doing a day job at the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) commissioning public art, then working as an arts programmer at the University of Chicago (both of which he found frustrating and ineffective), he rebranded himself as a conceptual artist and began to find his voice. He started to make installations from demolition-site debris such as shoe shine stands and sell the resulting “objects.”
While in school, he became aware of Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio at Auburn University. He was also impacted by what could be called its city version, Rick Lowe’s Project Row House in Houston, which cast urban renewal as an art installation. Gates looked at his Chicago neighborhood, which was suffering from unemployment, violence, abandoned buildings, and more, and began acquiring run-down buildings (at first with sub-prime loans) and turning them into cultural centers, rather than housing. Music, yoga, discussions, gospel singing, film screenings, cooking, and more, take place in these spaces.
Gates has learned to turn obstacles into advantages and reframe an argument, and he now has the track record to forward his ideas and projects. He talks about “preconditions,” the ground rules required to make transformations for fusing art and architecture with activism. Success is measured by the impact on the local community.
At the same time, Chicago is an architecturally aware city with shining examples from various periods. Gates has talked about viewing Frank Lloyd Wright buildings on his way to high school. On Monday night, he mused, “It’s hard not to think about Crown Hall,” the Mies van der Rohe architecture building at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), when you’re located in Chicago. When Gates showed a project he did at the OMA-designed Prada Foundation in Milan, he discussed working with this form of modernism, using the term almost as “orthodoxy.” Looking at the buildings that Gates has transformed, a modernist craft aesthetic is evident.
His signature structures, under the rubric of his Rebuild Foundation, a not-for-profit engine intended to “rebuild the cultural foundation of underinvested neighborhoods,” are the Dorchester Projects—the Listening House, Black Cinema House, Archive House, and now Stony Island Arts Bank. These buildings are just blocks away from the upcoming Obama Presidential Library in Jackson Park, to be designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, giving an extra frisson to the evening. Close proximity has given new import and financial value to Gates’s structures, and though it makes him look like a clairvoyant developer (Jackson Park won out of a rival site), the trick may have been that Gates has stayed. With his notoriety and financial security, Gates could live anywhere in the city, but he is firmly installed in the Dorchester complex where he both lives and works.
Gates has exported Chicago as well. At Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, he made a splash with the Huguenot House, an abandoned building transformed with detritus from the Dorchester buildings. The house was a continual work-in-progress over the course of the art fair by Gates and his 13 colleagues from Chicago, who lived in the house, constructed installations, performed, and conversed. Afterward, Gates combined elements from the building into objects that were sold for up to $120,000 each. Similarly, when Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel sold the 1923 Stony Island Avenue State Bank, an abandoned neoclassical structure slated for demolition, to Rebuild for $1.00 with the condition that he could raise money to renovate it, Gates took blocks of marble from the bathrooms and trim, embellished them with an acid-etched motto (“in ART we trust”), and his signature, and sold these art “bonds” at Art Basel for five thousand dollars each, raising half a million dollars.
Gates now has a seat at the table. When he met with Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson of Gary, Indiana, only 20 miles from his South Side neighborhood, about a potential art project, he asked what she needed. She replied funds. Within six months, he raised $1.6 million from the Bloomberg and Knight foundations. This month, ArtHouse: A Social Kitchen, an arts and culinary incubator, with an art gallery and pop-up cafe that will also host business workshops to support local entrepreneurs, was launched. It exemplified Gates’s ability to connect and convene. And it highlights his recasting of what it means to be an entrepreneur, which he says is the only word we have for broaching the meeting of an unemployed person and an abandoned building. Which brings us back to his consideration of “preconditions” and the ability to transform.
Billie Tsien also talked about opening up a fortune cookie for lunch that day, and reading “If you can’t decide to go up or down, go from side to side.” Theaster Gates exemplifies just that.

The Rebuild Foundation and its founder Theaster Gates have announced the launch of a new initiative to provide training for un- and under-employed people on the South Side of Chicago. Dorchester Industries will pair participants with Rebuild Foundation’s artists-in-residence and local tradespeople to learn new skills and create and sell art and design objects.
As part of a benefit and auction for the Stony Island Arts Bank (SIAB), the programmatic center of Rebuild Foundation, Dorchester Industries’ first class of participants produced works to be sold. Under the guidance of Japanese ceramicist Koichi Ohara, the participants have produced wooden tables and Japanese-style ceramic dishware over the last month. Eight of the participants worked directly with Ohara to produce over 2,000 pieces, including soup bowls, tea bowls, and sake sets. Fifteen of these will be sold at the auction in sets packed in handcrafted boxes. Works by Theaster Gates, Anselm Kiefer, Eddie Peake, and Antony Gromley will also be part of the auction. The proceeds from the participant-produced work will go to the participants, while other money raised will go to the rebuild Foundation's exhibitions and community programs.
Dorchester Industries was started as a carpentry program that sought to find sustainable uses of trees destroyed by emerald ash borer beetles in Chicago’s parks. Some of the wood from those trees was tooled into the tabletops which will be used at the auction.
“It is unquestionably better to teach a person to do something than to do it for them, and that is the precept at the core of Dorchester Industries,” explained Theaster Gates. “By providing workforce training in highly employable crafts such as carpentry or pottery work, we support the people in our community in real and tangible ways while also fostering an engagement and appreciation for a variety of art forms.”
The benefit and auction will also be a public preview of Glenn Licon’s A Small Band (2015) installation at the SIAB. The installation is comprised of neons spelling out “blues, bruise, and blood,” a reference to the “Harlem Six,” a group of young black men falsely accused and convicted of murder in the 1960s. Exhibitions and programming at the SIAB often “explore the representations of the black body in art.”
An online portion of the benefit auction is now open through November 5th on Paddle8.

Artist Theaster Gates is getting $10.25 million to grow a network of arts institutions on Chicago's South Side.
Chicago Arts + Industry Commons (CAIC), a collaboration between Gates’s Rebuild Foundation, University of Chicago's Place Lab, and the City of Chicago, will receive $5 million from four major foundations: JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation to use the arts as a tool for neighborhood revitalization. The rest of the money will come from individuals and philanthropic organizations (contributing organizations will be announced in a few days).
Ultimately, the CAIC will be self-sustaining: "[The] Chicago Arts + Industry Commons employs an evolving cultural reinvestment model that uses the revitalization of sleepy assets as part of an engine that spurs new development and new capital, a portion of which is used to support the civic commons," the project description explains.
The Stony Island Arts Bank, a community hub and art center that the Rebuild Foundation opened last year, will anchor a network of design studios, an industrial arts center, and public gardens in Grand Crossing. A West Side power plant next to the Garfield Park Conservatory will be converted into Garfield Park Industrial Arts, a warren of art galleries and the industrial arts center, surrounded by an amphitheater, cafe and plaza, while a shuttered Catholic school on the South Side will host art and design studios, as well as a "design accelerator" that will offer workshops to residents, DNAinfo reports. Finally, 13 vacant lots, on Kenwood Avenue between 68th and 70th Streets, will be turned into Kenwood Gardens, a park filled with art and sculpture.
Construction begins soon and programming is slated to begin late next year or early 2018.

The University of Chicago has announced plans for a new arts and cultural center called the Arts Block. Leading the design is Los Angeles–based Johnston Marklee in collaboration with community partners. The new center will be located in Washington Park along East Garfield Boulevard on the South Side of Chicago. The new Arts Block expands the university’s efforts to fill vacant buildings near campus with a mix of studios alongside performance and exhibition spaces. The Arts Block will join the
Currency Exchange Café, BING Art Books, the Arts Incubator, and the Place Lab at the Green Line Arts Center. The proposed design maintains the 1920s terra-cotta facade on the building that is currently on the site. Along with the redevelopment of the Arts Block, a vacant lot in the area will be transformed into an open-air pavilion.

Chicago artist Theaster Gates, professor at the college’s Department of Visual Arts and director of Arts + Public Life, has been spearheading the efforts to transform the 100,000-square-foot development along Garfield Boulevard.

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has release the final design for the currently under construction 95th/Dan Ryan Red Line L station. The complete reconstruction of the final stop on the Red Line started 2014, and is expected to be fully completed in 2018.

The Red Line is the busiest route in the L system, running 24 hours a day, from the far North to the far South Side. The $280 million project part of a much larger initiative to update many of the L stations throughout the system. The original station was designed by SOM and built in 1969. The station is a terminal for the line, with its own small yard that is being updated for ease of train movement. An integrated bus terminal is also being rebuilt with the station. Being the busiest stop on the south branch of the Red Line, the CTA has referred to the new station as the “signature” station of the L system.

Earlier conceptual designs were released to the public in 2014 for a more subdued heavily glazed station. The new renderings show bolder forms and more extensive use of bright red. The design for the station has been led by Chicago-based Exp.
The station will also include at least two major public artworks. The CTA is working with Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates on the public artworks as well as community outreach throughout the project.
Exp is also responsible for the design for the much anticipated Washington/Wabash L station in Chicago’s downtown Loop. The Washington/Wabash station, expected to be complete later this year, features undulating white ribbed awnings over the platforms. Announced in 2012, the stop will look particularly different than the often inconspicuous L stations in the loop. The station is expected to be complete this year.
Since 2012 CTA has also announced the remodeling of multiple other stations throughout the system. The latest include the Wilson Red Line station and the Garfield Green Line station. Work on the Garfield station has just received a $15 million TIGER Grant from the federal government. The station is also notable as it sits immediately next to the Theaster Gates initiated Arts Block, which will soon include a Johnston Marklee project.

Chicago’s Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative (DA+HC) has been awarded an AIA/HUD Secretary Award. The project was initiated by the Rebuild Foundation, an organization run by Chicago artist Theaster Gates, and Chicago-based Brinshore Development. Originally a 1980’s Chicago Housing Authority project, the Dante Harper housing project, the DA+HC is now a public/private/non-profit collaboration.
Consisting of 32 units and a community arts center, the DA+HC has become a cultural hub in Chicago’s South Side Grand Crossing Neighborhood. The overhaul of the site was designed by Chicago-based Landon Bone Baker Architects. Much of the work went into restoring the deteriorated original modernist structures, as well as converting four of the housing units into a light-filled arts center. Situated at the center of the project, overlooking a landscaped courtyard, the arts center is used for everything from music and dance to fine arts and community meetings. Along with affordable and public housing DA+HC also offers arts residencies for artists. Units were rehabilitated and outfitted with energy efficient appliances and building systems. The project surpasses the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria.
The AIA / HUD Secretary’s Awards are a collaboration between the AIA’s Housing and Custom Residential Knowledge Community and the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The awards were set up to “recognize excellence in affordable, accessible, and well-designed housing.” Projects were given awards in four categories, Excellence in Affordable Housing Design, Creating Community Connection Award, Community-Informed Design Award, Housing Accessibility. DA+HC was awarded the Creating Community Connection Award.
In the past year the DA+HC has also received other awards including the 2015 Urban Land Institute Vision Award, the Landmarks Illinois 2015 Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Award for Project of the Year, and the CNDA 2016 Richard H. Driehaus Foundation 2nd Place Award for Architectural Excellence in Community Design.

In the first in a series of public events and symposia, the University of Chicago’s Place Lab will be holding a community talk about ethical redevelopment on Chicago’s South Side. Place Lab is an organization made up of professionals from law, urban planning, architecture, design, social work, arts administration, and gender and cultural studies. It is a partnership between the UChicago Art initiative Arts + Public Life and the Harris School of Public Policy.
The June 22 event will include talks by artist/activist Theaster Gates, director of Place Lab, and Steve Edwards, executive director of the U. of C. Institute of Politics. Both speakers will discuss mindful development and collaboration in their work. Place Lab’s events aim to redefine city-making and question traditional modes of development. The events will also look at Gates’s success in redeveloping spaces for the local community and artists across the South Side.
Gates' projects include the Stony Island Arts Bank, a “hybrid gallery, media archive, library and community center.” The project redeveloped a 1923 beaux arts bank that had been abandoned in the 1980s. Another project, the Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative (DA+HC) is a redeveloped public housing campus. Thirty two town houses provide mixed-income housing for artist and community members to encourage dialog between the two groups.
Place Lab was founded in 2014. It focuses on nine main principles of ethical redevelopment including: repurpose and re-purpose, engaged participation, pedagogical moments, the indeterminate, design, place over time, stack leverage and access, constellations, and platforms. Along with working on the South Side, Place Lab shares its findings with other cities including Gary, Akron, and Detroit.
The first ethical redevelopment event will take place on Wednesday, June 22, Place from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. The event is open and free to the public. Guests can RSVP at http://placelab.uchicago.edu/public-convenings/.

The University of Chicago has announced plans for a new arts and cultural center called the Arts Block. The new center will be located in Washington Park along East Garfield Boulevard on the South Side of Chicago. The new Arts Block will expands the university's efforts to fill vacant buildings near campus with a mix of studios performance and exhibition spaces. The Arts Block will add to the Currency Exchange Café, BING Art Books, the Arts Incubator, and the Place Lab as art of the Green Line Arts Center.
Los Angeles-based Johnston Marklee will lead the design of the Arts Block in collaboration with community partners. Chicago artist Theaster Gates, professor in the Department of Visual Arts and director of Arts + Public Life, has been spearheading the efforts to transform the 100,000-square-foot development along Garfield Boulevard.
“To transform a neighborhood, we have to help people believe that beautiful things can happen there. Arts and culture are some of the ways we can do that,” Gates remarked in a press release. “Investing in people’s abilities and developing space for creativity to thrive are ways we can demonstrate that belief.”
Johnston Marklee was selected from a field of seven offices to redesign the new center. The eight-member jury was impressed with Johnston Marklee’s “ability to design distinctly contextual buildings housing beautiful and functional spaces using common materials in unexpected ways.” The proposed design maintains the 1920’s terra-cotta facade the building that is currently on the site. Along with the redevelopment of the Arts Block, a vacant lot in the area will be transformed into an open air pavilion.
https://youtu.be/2GFSntNvW9o

IDEAS CITY has announced the names of 41 International Fellows to participate in an Intensive Studio Laboratory Program during the April 25-30 event in Detroit.
Selected from over 800 applicants, the Fellows will work in the Herman Kiefer Complex—a former hospital complex in Virginia Park. The five-day charrette will culminate in a day long public program of presentations and talks. The Fellows are made up of emerging practitioners who are working at the intersection of community activism, art, design, and technology.
Director of IDEAS CITY Joseph Grima stated in a press release, “IDEAS CITY Detroit will gather forty-one extraordinary individuals to tackle specific challenges facing the city. We’re incredibly excited to have the opportunity to learn from Detroit, to deploy a collective intelligence model based on arts and culture, and to further exchange with the community. The city is in the process of reinventing itself and, once again, is on the verge of transforming our understanding of the modern metropolis. Detroit is a laboratory for a new paradigm of urbanity.”
The Fellows named are Joe Ahearn, Taylor Renee Aldridge, Ava Ansari, Hallie Applebaum, Leonardo Aranda, Nick Axel, Merve Bedir, Francesca Berardi, Beverly Chou, Carolyn Concepcion, Gabriela Córdoba, Afaina de Jong, Pınar Demirdağ, Fataah Dihaan, Shaida Ghomashchi, Jon Gray, Kunal Gupta, Tommy Haddock, Jason Hilgefort, Ekene Ijeoma, Tamara Jafar, Stacy’e Jones, Toms Kokins, Cindy Lin, Monty Luke, Daanish Masood, Tiff Massey, Jose R. Mejia, Cara Michell, Marsha Music, Ryan Myers-Johnson, Claire Nowak-Boyd, Evelina Ozola, Paolo Patelli, Margarita Pournara, Jay Rayford, Unai Reglero, Alethea Rockwell, Ruhi Shamim, Giuditta Vendrame, and Nikolas Ventourakis.
The April 30 public event will include the Fellows as well as talks by New York Magazine writer Rembert Browne, Chicago artist Theaster Gates, City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Michelle T. Boone, architect Walter Hood, and artist/architect Amanda Williams, and more. The event will be held at the Jam Handy, a former film studio for car commercials located at 2900 East Grand Boulevard.
IDEAS CITY is an international initiative to promote arts and culture as vital parts of healthy future cities. It was co-founded by Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, and Karen Wong, Deputy Director, the New Museum, and is directed by Joseph Grima.
2016–17 Schedule
IDEAS CITY Detroit: April 25–30, 2016
IDEAS CITY Athens: September 19–25, 2016, in partnership with NEON Foundation
IDEAS CITY Arles: May 22–27, 2017, presented by the New Museum, LUMA Arles, and LUMA
IDEAS CITY New York: Fall 2017
IDEAS CITY Detroit Public Conference
Saturday April 30, 2016
The Jam Handy
2900 East Grand Boulevard
Detroit, MI 48202
11:15–11:30 AM:
Welcome Address by IDEAS CITY, Maurice Cox, and Rembert Browne
11:30 AM–1 PM: Session 1
Opening Keynote by Theaster Gates
Talk by Amanda Williams
Panel Discussion with Michelle T. Boone, Theaster Gates, Jenny Lee, and Amanda Williams
Presentations by Studio Laboratory Fellows
1:30–3 PM: Session 2
Opening Keynote by dream hampton
Panel Discussion with Rembert Browne, Halima Cassells, dream hampton, and Sonya S. Mays
Presentations by Studio Laboratory Fellows
3:30–7 PM: Session 3
Opening Keynote by Walter Hood
Talk by Bryan Boyer
Panel Discussion with Kunlé Adeyemi, Bryan Boyer, Ellie Abrons/T+E+A+M, and Walter Hood
Presentations by Studio Laboratory Fellows
Screening by Liam Young

Stony Island Arts Bank6760 South Stony Island Avenue, Chicago
Carlos Bunga, Under the Skin, through January 3
Frida Escobedo, Materials Reservoir, through January 3
The Stony Island Arts Bank is a project of Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates’ nonprofit Rebuild Foundation. The foundation converted a vacant former savings bank on the South Side into an archive, exhibition space, and community center to encourage artist-led, community-driven revitalization.
Current programming includes works by Barcelona-based multimedia artist Carlos Bunga, and architect Frida Escobedo (Mexico City).
For Under the Skin, Bunga uses cardboard and adhesive tape to create a fluid space that responds to the surrounding architecture and comments on the making process.
For Materials Reservoir, Escobedo gathered debris from a demolished South Side church to create a reverse Tower of Babel, with walls that can be re-arranged and destroyed. The piece comments on how meaning and materiality can be appropriated and constructed by each participant.

Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates launched Sanctum, a 24-day performance in Bristol, England that will have continuous programming 24 hours a day.
Gates set the performance in Temple Church, a 14th-century building that was bombed out during the Bristol Blitz in World War II. The temporary venue was constructed out of leftover building materials from all over the city: brick and doors from local homes, bricks from the demolished citadel in St. Paul’s, wood from the Prince Street bridge, and flooring from a former chocolate factory nearby.
Produced by the art organization Situations, the performance line up will not be published so visitors will not know what they will hear until they enter the space. Sanctum will be open through November 21.